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Focus: Safe haven

Ireland is under attack for its handling of extradition cases. But are the courts slow thanks to a thorough pursuit of justice or is the legal process causing potentially dangerous delays, asks Enda Leahy

James Daly watched a group of young children playing in a pub in Cork as he wrote a postcard to his wife one afternoon last May.

“Today the sun was shining and weather warm,” the 64-year-old Irish-American doctor wrote to Renee in California. “Coffee at the pub and people-watching.”

He added: “The children are let into the pub and cared for by all the adults there. This is truly an extended family community.”

It may have been an innocent observation in a letter home. But unbeknown to the adults and children in that Cork pub, Daly was a convicted paedophile. Just one month earlier he had been found guilty by an American court of 10 counts of molesting a family member when she was between the ages of five and 12. He had been arrested in May 2004 on suspicion of aggravated assault on a child, kidnapping, forcible rape and